Police take down the world's largest DDoS-for-hire service

Police in twelve countries have taken down WebStresser, believed to be the world's largest service for paid DDoS attacks. Seven suspects behind the website were arrested or subject to searches in the Netherlands, UK, Canada, and other countries.

Police seized Webstresser.org's servers, meaning details of the 136,000 registered users have probably been exposed to law enforcement. Those customers with little or no technical knowledge could launch crippling attacks around the world. Online systems from banks, government institutions, and police forces were among the targets, Europol said.

Like many other cyberattack-for-hire services, WebStresser made it all too easy to knock sites offline on a whim. You could pay as little as $15 to flood a site with traffic, regardless of how little technical knowledge you had. Annoyed by a company's practices, or just wanted petty revenge? You simply had to order an attack.

The website has been accused of over four million cyber-attacks worldwide, with attempts to break into banks in the UK among them.